Mini Starts All-Electric Push With 2024 Cooper Hatch EV

The first step in turning Mini into BMW’s first fully electric brand starts with the 2024 Cooper EV, and Mini has taken it back to the future and back to the basics at the same time.

The BMW Group’s small-car brand has literally circled away from widescreen digital dashes for the all-electric Cooper for 2024, with the car industry’s first circular digital touchscreen combining with a head-up display to do most of the critical and infotainment work.

Mini says the ninth generation of the Cooper three-door hatch will be “more Mini than ever before” and it will be right, because the weight of the battery pack will force the 1.7-tonne hatch to significantly outweigh all of its predecessors.

But while the Cooper will be the first step in Mini’s electric overhaul, it will be most notable for its version of the BMW Group’s infotainment operating system, which uses a customizable round digital screen in the centre of the dash, rather than the trendier horizontal layout.

The EV will have nine different driving modes and will even sport an exhaust note, which Mini allows drivers to (thankfully, in our experience) switch off.

It will feature a Mini “experience”, which will adjust the car’s interior color theme and its interior lighting to match the driving characteristics.

Its modes include Forest, Timeless, Vivid, Trail, Core and Green and, in keeping with Mini’s repeated handling claims, Go Kart, which turns the interior black and switches the dials to red.

It uses the first round OLED touchscreen display ever fitted to a passenger production car, and the 240mm-diameter screen is almost frameless and even has a retro option to look like an original Mini display.

“We defined the interior layout of the new Mini family five years ago,” Mini’s head of product management, interior and digital experience, Chistine Theis said.

“We were always inspired by the interior dash of the original Mini.”

Mini has also moved away from a traditional instrument cluster in front of the driver and instead relies on a head-up display for speed and directions and other critical information.

The new EV is 5G-compatible, and can use a digital key to help it access its digital store, complete with streaming services for games, music and video.

There are also two specific avatars (Mini and Spike) as assistants, with each having their own unique voice to help navigate around the car’s systems.

While the in-car entertainment draws from a app store that allows both Mini and third-party apps, there are also two avatars – mini and spike – that will have their own distinct voices in 2024.

Besides that, it even allows personal modes, where owners can upload their own pictures to the car to set as the multimedia screen’s background image.

The dash itself is knitted, with an odd strap that serves no function (it’s repeated on the centre console), in something Mini calls “tactile lovables”. Or, design tinsel.

It keeps the old-school toggle switches for the climate control system – in a stark contrast to the rival Volkswagen ID.3 and ID.4 (and Golf).

There is a driving selection lever behind the smaller steering wheel, and there is a new look to the cup holders, while two USB-C ports sit up front as well.

Exterior

There is a clear Mini family resemblance in the 2024 Mini Cooper EV, and it still measures the 3800mm overall length of its predecessor, more or less, though it’s wider.

Outside, instead of a fixed set of Union Jack tail lights, Mini has gone to the enormous trouble of homologating three different light patterns in the rear lights.

It’s noticeably wider, with larger wheels and very short overhangs combined with a longer wheelbase, and it’s a very solid, chunky and sporty look.

While Mini didn’t give out any performance details, it is expected to have a similar power output and performance to the current Mini Electric, making it to 100km/h in around 7.0 seconds out of 135kW of electric, front-drive power.

There is a stronger Cooper SE in the pipeline, too, with around 160kW of power, and a 190kW JCW variant will eventually top the range.